Why Voluntold is a BAD word

Q. What happens when you tell a child to do something they don’t want to?

a. They smile sweetly and ask for your preferred approach

b. They start throwing a tantrum and you duck for cover as toys get hurled towards you

c. They reluctantly oblige. Also, completely unrelated but you’ve found things you typically need (ie keys, shaver, wallet) start to go missing around the house and when you eventually find them, they’ve appeared in the strangest places!

If you went with option a, tell me your secret!!!

The reality is, adults are just big kids. We HATE the words should, must and have to because obligation creates incongruence. It takes effort to do things we don’t want to and we then need to find other forms of compensation to make it tolerable. Sure, as adults we know we sometimes have to do things we don’t want to. How else are we meant to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table? Yes, we can try and placate ourselves so we feel better about having to submit but in truth, it doesn’t make it all that much easier. If anything, it just stops us from externalising our frustrations and forces us to internalise them until we become bitter old men and women ranting and raving or have gone so down a rabbit hole of coping mechanisms that we’ve become a shell of the bright spark that once embodied who we wanted to be.

Which leads me to today’s buzz word:

VOLUNTOLD

To explain the concept of voluntold, I’m going to draw on a story of baby Moses. As the story goes, Pharaoh like many others loved baby Moses, but when playing with him, baby Moses had a tendency to put the Pharoah’s crown on his own head. Worried by this behaviour, Pharoah’s advisors suggested Moses be tested to see if his actions really suggested a desire to be king. Presented with a piece of gold and a hot coal, Moses was to be killed if he reached for the gold. As he reached for the gold, an angel moved his hand so that he instead grabbed the hot coal which he put in his mouth causing him to develop a speech impediment.

Now picture the above but substitute baby Moses with an adult Moses. Don’t get me wrong, if given the choice between being killed and ending up with a lisp, I’m sure an adult Moses would have happily reached for the coal but how do you think he’d respond if someone casually walked up to him and forced his hand?

Being voluntold sounds relatively harmless, especially when those doing the telling come from a place of good intention. But there’s a problem that lies in both inconsistency and the deprivation of autonomy.

To choose and to be told exist as equal and opposing forces which don’t naturally co-exist. In the case of being voluntold, the told is the dominating force. Yes it’s an extreme situation but picture someone pointing a gun to your head and asking you if you’d like to give them all your money and jewellery. OF COURSE YOU DON’T! But it doesn’t really feel like you have much choice do you? Which means you’ll resent them, think lots of bad thoughts about them and reluctantly hand over your great grandmother’s wedding ring in the hope that the whole ordeal will be over soon.

Unlike the robber who you’d likely celebrate being hit by a bus, things get trickier when there’s a level of trust or rapport involved. Whether it’s your partner who has voluntold you to do errands/chores or your boss who has voluntold you to go onto a new project, this artificial sense of autonomy just adds insult to injury as it highlights to you how little autonomy you actually have relative to how much you think you should have. This exacerbates suffering as thanks to loss aversion we experience more pain over things we once had than things we never acquired (just think back to things you had confiscated in your teenage years or even more recently your freedoms to venture further than 5kms from your home). Now you’re not only frustrated by your reluctant submission but feeling torn as you resent your predicament but your brain can’t quite consolidate the different narratives it’s busy juggling.

Of course you want to stay in a happy marriage or to keep your job but you need to feel like you’re choosing to make the trade rather than having it thrust upon you. This situation comes up time and time again in many of the hero stories. Wary of the sacrifices they’ll need to make in order to step into these roles, bribery or force would never have transformed them into the heroes we love. They therefore needed to choose to act for something more that could help them justify the sacrifices, restoring their perceived sense of autonomy (even though the actual circumstances around them didn’t really change).

Our autonomy (even if it’s only perceived), is one of the most precious things we possess. In careers, it’s one of the most sought after job features (and most complained about when it’s lacking). Give people choice over their working hours, the ability to take unlimited days of annual leave (which ironically leads to their taking less) or tasks they’d like to work on and you’ll find they become more cooperative, collaborative and generally nicer people. Of course we can’t possibly give people absolute autonomy, that would create utter chaos. There’s a reason we need people leading the troops and giving direction. Funnily enough, where people expect they won’t have much autonomy, they’re perfectly comfortable with being told what to do. In fact, in situations where they’re experiencing a lot of uncertainty, they’ll welcome it.

So what’s the lesson?

Voluntold is a BAD word and an even worse thing to do to someone. We like certainty so much we often don’t even care if it comes at the expense of our autonomy. But the inconsistency that comes from being voluntold is torturous to our poor little brains. So do yourself and others a favour and have a frank conversation that sets expectations regardless of which direction things go. If need be, give someone time to come to terms with the sacrifices they may need to make so they can restore a little of their perceived level of autonomy. It might be more difficult up front but it’ll garner a lot more respect and cooperation in the future.